It’s a messy story, and we’ll have to see whether we learn anything further about the source of the leak. For now, I hold to two basic points: (1) if Trump didn’t approve the leak and somebody in the federal government (specifically, the IRS) leaked the two pages of the 2005 return to advance their own personal political agenda, that is both illegal and a grossly inappropriate intrusion into Trump’s personal information and should be opposed by anyone, regardless of their political views, who has entrusted the government with their confidential information, via tax returns or otherwise; and (2) the returns show why presidential candidates should release their returns and why, if they object to such a release, voters should insist that they do so. The 2005 returns indicate that Trump paid millions of dollars pursuant to the alternative minimum tax — a tax that Trump has talked about abolishing. The public deserves to know whether political positions are motivated by a politician’s own self interest.

My feelings about Tax Day are decidedly ambivalent. I recognize that taxes are the price we pay for living in a free society, and I pay them willingly. A modern military with modern weaponry, a welfare state system that tries to help the poor and elderly, and a government that shoulders far-reaching tasks like disease control or preventing alien species from invading the Great Lakes can’t be funded by the system of duties and tariffs that supported a much more limited government during the colonial era. I also think it’s ridiculous for people like Ted Cruz to talk about abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. If you accept that taxes must be paid, as I do, there must be an entity that collects the tax.

At the same time, it’s hard for me to feel warm and fuzzy about our tax system or the IRS. Last night Kish and I watched the latest Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and it tried to make viewers feel sorry for the IRS, because IRS jobs are boring, the Internal Revenue Code is constantly being changed by Congress, and IRS funding has been cut. Good luck with that effort! The IRS may be necessary, but don’t expect me to give it a hug, okay? And when I sign my forms and send in my payments, don’t think I’m a nut if I wonder about the presence of unfairness in our tax code and abuse and favoritism in the highly political process by which tax exemptions are determined and tax rates are imposed.

Every year, as I look at the forms and the complicated instructions, I wonder if there isn’t a simpler, fairer way to do it. Say what you will about the sales tax, but it’s a straightforward percentage that anybody can calculate, and it targets consumption rather than work. If you want to soak the idle rich, wouldn’t a tax when they buy ridiculously appointed $200,000 SUVs be a good idea? And user fees that are triggered when a specific federal service is used — say, for use of ports and customs, for airline security, or for drug or vehicle testing to ensure compliance with safety standards — also seems fair. Couple that with an income tax and withholding system that involves fewer exemptions, exclusions, deductions, tax rate levels, and schedules, and maybe you’ve got a workable system that won’t cause so many Americans to take the IRS’s name in vain come every April 15.

A key official has taken the Fifth Amendment. After months of efforts by lawmakers to get her emails, and a promise by the new head of the IRS that the emails would be produced, IRS officials belatedly announced that a number of the emails were lost in a computer crash and buried the news in the middle of a long letter. Then it was announced that the computers of other IRS officials involved in the probe had also crashed. Then the IRS disclosed that it had not tried to restore the emails from back-up tapes, and that the back-up tapes that would have stored the emails had been recycled.

It’s another example of the time-honored public relations lesson. PR pros always tell anyone who is dealing with bad news to get ahead of the story — divulge all the bad news at once, be forthcoming about what happened, and apologize and move on. The IRS didn’t learn that lesson. Instead, it has clearly hoped that the story would just go away and that it could bury the bad news in places where no one would notice it, and even now Koskinen refuses to apologize. As a result, the IRS’ credibility has been taken a significant hit as the bad news has frittered out in dribs and drabs. The approach has kept the story on the front pages of the news, and people who weren’t paying much attention to the story at the outset now are wondering whether the IRS’ apparent stonewalling is actually hiding something harmful.

I think most people would agree that an IRS that targets people or groups for audits and special treatment because of their political views is a bad thing. The IRS’ botched handling of the matter seems to be turning a simple investigation into a burgeoning scandal. It’s a useful reminder of a basic PR lesson — one the IRS has yet to learn.

The mainstream press seems to be paying more attention to this story; the articles linked above are from NPR, USA Today, and ABC. I think the attention is warranted, because even the innocent explanations sure make it seem like the IRS follows odd practices.

Lois Lerner was the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, not some flunky. If her computer crashed and she lost all of her email, why didn’t IRS computer geeks just grab the most recent back-up tape, download her email box, and restore it to her computer? What’s the point of keeping back-up tapes if you don’t use them in the case of a crash and catastrophic data wipeout? And could the IRS really have computers that are so crappy that seven different employees — including Lerner and the chief of staff to the deputy commissioner of the IRS — experienced devastating crashes that caused them to lose all of their email, which again was not restored through resort to back-up tapes? And if the IRS determined that the emails were lost months ago, why didn’t they ‘fess up immediately rather than withholding the information until now?

Folks, this isn’t a mere political football, it’s a matter of accountability and good practices. If the IRS has ludicrous computer capabilities and poor data practices, we should address that — and if there was some kind of targeting campaign and cover-up, we obviously have a right to get to the bottom of that, too. Congress has a right to investigate the activities of federal administrative agencies, and those administrative agencies — even the IRS — should respond openly, completely, and promptly. It doesn’t appear that that was done here. Why not? It’s a fair question.

Ask Americans which federal agency they fear the most, and many are likely to say it’s the Internal Revenue Service. Every year, Americans send in their federal tax filings by the April 15 deadline — which is only four days away, folks — and we’ve all heard stories about tax liabilities, painful audits, and the IRS taking people’s houses on those urgent tax-preparer and tax-problem-solver radio and late-night TV commercials.

Has the IRS become politicized? That’s an important question for everyone, regardless of their political inclinations. Through their tax filings, Americans provide the IRS with huge amounts of otherwise highly confidential information each year — about what they own, what they’ve earned, the charities they help fund, and the causes and candidates they support. Americans need to be able to trust that that information will be kept private and won’t be used for political purposes or to single out people or groups for adverse treatment. The disclosures about political activities by IRS officials and line employees, and the fact that Republicans and Democrats can’t agree about how to investigate the targeting allegations, are bound to erode that essential trust. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, if you are a taxpayer that is a very unsettling development.

Yesterday the Sunday news shows were largely focused on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his staff’s decision to shut down lanes of the George Washington Bridge in order to exact some kind of political retribution on a New Jersey mayor.

Some conservatives reacted by counting how many minutes the shows devoted to the New Jersey story or by comparing how much air time and how many column inches have been devoted to “Bridgegate” as opposed to incidents like the Benghazi killings or the IRS targeting conservative organizations. They contend that the news media is biased and that Republican scandals always get more attention than Democratic scandals do.

This kind of reaction is just whining, and it’s neither attractive nor convincing. Both parties do it. When the news media was reporting every day on the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov, Democrats were doing the same thing and arguing that the media was ignoring the positive things accomplished by the Affordable Care Act. It’s a juvenile response to the news media doing its job.

The amount of coverage a story receives is largely a function of factors that have nothing to do with politics. The George Washington bridge incident has all the elements of a great story — a powerful politician, venal and misbehaving staff members, an initial cover-up, and average Americans being inconvenienced by some crass political power play. There is footage of traffic jams to be shown, angry and easy-to-find people to be interviewed, and a contrite governor’s press conference to cover. The same is true with the Obamacare website story: there are good visuals, lots of individual stories to tell, and obvious story lines to follow, like how did this happen and how much did it cost and who screwed up. Ask yourself which story is easier to cover — the New Jersey bridge closure or the shootings in faraway and dangerous Libya — and you’ll get a good sense of which story will in fact get more coverage.

Modern politicians always seem to have an excuse and always look for someone else to blame. Whining about news coverage apparently is part of the playbook, but I can’t believe it works. Whining is pathetic, not persuasive.

The IRS scandal may have been knocked off the front page by Edward Snowden’s fugitive travels and the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin trial, but it’s still out there, and there have been some interesting recent developments.

The new acting commissioner of the IRS, Danny Werfel, has concluded that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” on certain screening lists and states that he ended the process earlier this month. He said he found no evidence of “intentional wrongdoing” by IRS employees, but rather “insufficient action” by managers to prevent and disclose the problems. Werfel says the IRS is committed to correcting its mistakes and holding individuals accountable as appropriate, and the AP report states that the top five people in the IRS responsible for the tax-exempt status of organizations have been removed from their jobs.

It’s all predictable, and the scenario is a familiar one. Improper action by an agency comes to light, and the first response is to argue that the practices have ended and there is nothing left to examine. Sometimes that approach works, but when it doesn’t, and congressional committees begin digging, different stories often emerge, and new questions get asked. How did the IRS screening lists get created? Who vetted the terms included on the list? What process was followed when an organization whose name included such terms was identified?

The IRS scandal shows the value of congressional committees that actually conduct investigations, use their subpoena power, and take meaningful testimony. It also shows that we shouldn’t necessarily trust the reassuring initial statements of agency heads or accept inspector general reports as the last word. The congressional committees should continue their investigations, but then they need to take the next step — determining whether the tax-exempt status laws should be changed, and if so, how. That will require Congress to wrestle with some uncomfortable questions: Why do we grant tax-exempt status to these organizations — regardless of their political affiliations or apparent interests — in the first place, and should that practice continue? If so, how do we rein in the exercise of discretion by the IRS, so that bureaucrats can’t simply decide to target one group over another on the basis of whim and caprice?